Blu/Sch A.K.A. the Vampire Mage Guide by Smudgey
If you have any suggestions, or questions, or just wanna say thanks :D.... send me a /tell on Midgardsormr or email me at smugy@hotmail.com. Update!! Since the server merge destroyed Midgard, please send /tells to "Smudged" on the Quetzalcoatl server (yes someone already had my old name on this server) Introduction Hello, Smudge from Midgardsormr here. I developed a Blue Mage fighting style with an unexpected support job, Scholar. After searching the guides on wiki and seeing no reference to it I decided to share it myself. The Bluemage/Scholar a.k.a. the Vampire Mage means one thing and I must say it right now *''This fighting combination depends solely on stealing enemy mp, if the enemy doesn't have a mp pool this subjob loses a great amount of worth'' (though it keeps a few bonuses)* Now that we have that warning out of the way, an explanation is in order, and first and foremost you must be asking "Smudge, why on earth Scholar as a support job?". Well to answer that we'll go through the pros and cons. Pros Something most people don't know unless they play Scholar is that Light Arts and Dark Arts increase your Healing Magic, Enhancing Magic, Enfeebling Magic, and Dark Magic skills based on your Main job's level, meaning if you use Light Arts as a 75 Bluemage your healing skill will be roughly the same as a 75 Scholar (without equipment buffs of course). *But Smudge why does this matter? For a few reasons actually. Healing skill directly effects your own Blue Magic healing. For instance, as a level 75, by simply activating Light Arts it can increase the amount healed by Magic Fruit by almost 50hp (100hp if your usual sub doesn't have a healing skill!). This also means that your less likely to be interrupted while casting these spells! Another reason this matters, the increased skills mean enemies are less likely to resist the black magic Scholar offers which brings me to the next and possibly most important pro to /sch. Drain and (more importantly) Aspir have a Much better chance at successfully landing on an enemy than say subbing blm or rdm where the Dark Magic skill is only half of your level. *Which means what exactly? ... it means the black magic you get from Scholar can actually be used in battle as long as you have the proper "Arts" activated. Scholar also offers the job abilities to either cut your next Scholar spell's mp cost or cast/recast time by 50% *And we should care why? The main reason for this will be explained in detail later Scholar also offers Sublimation at lvl 70 *This is an amazing thing to abuse as a bluemage. Since bluemages have more HP than MP than most mages we actually get the most to offer from this ability than any other mage, more details later. Light/Dark Arts also has native fast cast effects, meaning your scholar spells cast faster and recast faster as well. *This is useless! No it isn't I'll explain later -_- You also receive the traits Resist Silence (meh), Clear Mind 1&2, Conserve MP AND Max MP Boost without having to waste blue spells slots to get them yourself. Scholar also offers the spells Raise, Reraise, Regen II, Sneak, Invisible, and Protect II which are not major but nice to have, as well as the bonus of having Sleep AND Dispel without the need to set the spells yourself and waste space. Cons The only thing Scholar has in Cons is its lack of unique abilities the other subjobs offer. It does not offer Utsusemi for survivability or Dual Wield (I personally find dual wield pointless once you get Genbu's Shield as blu's melee dmg is low since it gets no Attack Bonus unless you specifically gear for it), nor Sneak Attack for spike damage. and as I've said before this support job is rendered useless against enemies that either have no mp to steal or are resistant to dark magic. Update!! With the new patch subbing scholar now gives us reraise! Which means theres absolutely no reason to sub whm anymore!!! Strategy The idea behind blu/sch is having infinite potential as long as the enemy has MP. I came up with this combo to rival the rdm/nin that soloers are so proud of. To be able to continue on until the enemy is dead as long as you have the time to kill, the rechargeable battery.... ok I hope your getting my point. Aspir The point. The point is my blu/sch survives solely on abusing the low casting cost/time/recast of the Aspir scholar offers. Imagine it like this, Aspir takes 60seconds to recast, with Dark Arts fast cast it becomes about 50 seconds, with refueling, you can cut that to about 44seconds without any effort yet! With the Scholar ability Alacrity *drool*, a level 75 blu can use this twice about every 4 minutes, it cuts the cast/recast time for black magic by 50%, which means using this with Aspir allows you to cast it again in a mere 30seconds! Now compare that to the popular MP Drainkiss. While the amount of mp it can steal can be increased, it costs twice as much mp to cast, and recast time is a whole 90seconds, with no way to cut it down besides haste buffs. I gotta be clear though, this does NOT mean MP Drainkiss is useless, its actually what I suggest using in between the time your waiting for the Alacrity Stratagems to recharge. What you want to do is keep a balance between how much mp you spend in the time before you start spamming Aspir. Sublimation My god Sublimation is fantastic for soloing, for my personal Elvaan blu, I receive about 316mp with a fully charged Sublimation, that is practically 50% of my MP pool!!! And the fact it can charge while in battle or whenever gives blu its own mini refresh/convert (depending on how you look at it) the only time this shouldn't be used is if you have a rdm casting refresh since sublimation stops it. The only downside is the fact the more mp you can store means it takes longer to finish. Mine takes roughly 8-9minutes. But the large charge time means more mp stored so its really a situation of "is the glass half empty or half full" so its up to you to decide if its bad or not. Convergence This point is something I HAVE to say, but I want to say first that merits are personal preference so don't take this to heart, its just how I geared my bluemage. At the time I'm writing this guide I have put 3 upgrades into Convergence and plan to max it out eventually, why you ask? One word... MP Drainkiss... ok maybe 4 words <_<=>_>... point is! Convergence increases both the accuracy AND the amount of mp stolen with MP Drainkiss! The main thing I always disliked about MPdk was its random accuracy, many blu's don't learn how awesome it is until endgame cause we get no magic acc gear, with a maxed convergence not only would it increase the acc by 25%, it would also increase the amount stolen by about 41mp each time, that's assuming wiki is correct about MPdk's max 165mp cap, meaning a 25% increased chance to get a whopping 206mp stolen (roughly 30% of my mp pool). Since I don't use Blm/blu nuke magic often I find this completely awesome, especially for my Vampire Mage. Just thought I'd give my thoughts. Update!! Just made a new record for MP Drainkiss, 232mp from a Nightmare Crab in Dynamis, achieved with Burst affinity and a level5 Convergence. I can only imagine what it would've been with a Magic Burst or Azure Lore Bottom Line The most common place to use the Vampire Mage is in campaign battle where every enemy has MP to take. Here's the steps to the average battle, it sums up the Vampire Mage: *Start battle *Blow away a big chunk of mp on nukes *Alacrity Aspir *MP Drainkiss (with Convergence if you enjoy) *Alacrity Aspir *Nuke *Aspir *Refrain from nuking and continue stealing mp until your mp pool is either full or Alacrity is recharged *Repeat Add Sublimation into the mix for that delicious flavor >:D you'll be saying "I can't believe its not Refresh @_@!" and repeat from step 2! If done properly against a "reasonable" enemy (no NMs or anything -_-) you should never run out of MP, though battles might take a bit longer. Videos The damn youtube logo blocks my hp/mp bar in this video...for a larger version of the video below, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPaTY4WO_wU uPaTY4WO_wU :To enjoy the video below in full screen visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQZ-hW13yPw xQZ-hW13yPw